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Twitter has unveiled a new two-pane layout that will be rolled out to all users over the next weeks as a preview. The changes will lead Twitter.com away from its humble stream-of-updates past and towards a more interactive, app-like future.

The website now has a new two-panel view. Your familiar stream of tweets run down the left side. On the right side is a dashboard of sorts, where you can see recent activity from your followers and the people you follow, trending topics, and the list of people you might want to follow.

Click on a tweet and it expands in the right panel. There, you’ll see rich media like photos and videos, associated conversations, recent tweets by the author, and mini bios for any other people mentioned in the tweet.

Overall, the update plays on features found in popular Twitter client apps like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, and it looks a bit like the official Twitter app for the iPad. Somewhat like those apps, you can delve into videos or photos without leaving the Twitter website, whereas the old site required you to leave the site or launch links in new browser tabs.

When you expand a tweet by clicking on it, if there’s a video or a photo from a supported site (YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and TwitPic were all included in Tuesday’s launch) it shows up in a nice large format. Videos play right there, and Flickr photos are accompanied by thumbnails to the rest of the photoset – if there is one. You can choose to see embedded photos and videos from only from people you’re following, or from everyone.

The changes are rolling out now, so if you haven’t seen them yet, you will soon!